


A Voice from the Stars

by Glinda



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Hallucinations, Introspection, Missing Scene, post-Mayday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-04
Updated: 2016-04-04
Packaged: 2018-05-31 07:39:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6461596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glinda/pseuds/Glinda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I just want to go home" said the astronaut. "So come home," said Ground Control. "S o  C o m e  H o m e" said the voice from the stars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Voice from the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> I saw this beautiful little [comic](http://apselene.tumblr.com/post/124387452222/the-voice-from-the-stars) on Tumblr and got attacked by a plot bunny. So here have a tiny blast of my Eiffel feelings.

The USS Urania spends approximately 73 hours docked with the Hermes after they rescue Eiffel, partly because they have supplies to drop off and they’d bypassed Hermes to investigate his craft. Also partly because no one had been entirely sure Eiffel was actually going to survive and didn’t want to cart a corpse out to the Hephaestus with them. (Eiffel hasn’t been near a mirror since arriving but he knows he’s lost his hair and his nails and the Hermes crew’s faces when they see him suggest the rest of him doesn’t look much better.) Eiffel’s just grateful to get some medical treatment from someone with better bedside manner - and better pain killers - than Hilbert.

“I just want to go home,” Eiffel tells Canaveral when he speaks to Command briefly.

“So come home,” says Cutter his voice gentle and utterly insincere. The crew of the Hermes get actual supply runs, they tell him he’s welcome to stay with them until the next run. Eiffel doesn’t doubt that the promise of space on the return journey for him that Cutter offers, is only made for the benefit of the listening Hermes crew. The Hermes crew are a bit space mad from the isolation, but they’re not actually evil, even if he’d be essentially going home to get shot, he’d probably have a safer last couple of months with them than getting back onto the Urania with Keppler, Jacobi and Maxwell. At least this way he has a chance of at least seeing Earth one last time before he dies.

He spends some time alone in the observation deck of the Hermes looking back towards Earth. He reminds himself of all the things he misses about Earth - pizza and cigarettes and gravity mostly - and tries not to think about the way he misses the rest of the Hephaestus crew. He hasn’t hallucinated any of them since being rescued but their absence is still like an open wound.

“I just want to go home,” Eiffel whispers into the silence of the observation deck.

“So come home,” says Hera in his ear. Glitch-free the way she’s never been, but warm and gentle the way she always is when its just them. Doing a better impression of human emotion than Cutter ever manages.

Before all this started, on the way out to the Hephaestus nearly two years before, Eiffel had indulged his childhood dream that the stars were calling him home. Never imagining that the star they would be orbiting would actually try to talk to them would really call out to them. Maybe that was why he’d never really fitted in on Earth, maybe he was always meant to come out here among the stars, maybe he’d finally found where he belonged. Maybe that was worth everything he’d lived through, everything else he’d have to endure if he went back.

He steps onto the USS Urania and nods to the frankly terrifying crew.

“Alright then, take me home.”

And they do.


End file.
